Walking in South Knoxville

This is WAY too big a topic for just one post, y’all. If you want to go hiking but you don’t feel like driving to the mountains, South Knoxville is the place for you. And I’m not just talking Ijams, even though we all know how wonderful that is.
But let me back up for a minute. I grew up a Northwest Knoxville girl, and South Knoxville was that place with all the kudzu that we entered approximately three times per year, if that: twice a year to visit our dentist whose office was on Taliwa, just a couple of miles down Chapman Highway; and maybe once for our all-too-infrequent trips to Metcalf Bottoms in the Smokies.
But then I grew up, got married, had three kids, and needed to live in a house instead of an apartment. Our first home was in the Lake Forest neighborhood of South Knoxville, on the dogwood trail, and I quickly grew to appreciate this underrated part of my hometown. One of its charms then and now was the large parts of it that remained undeveloped–its topography is less hospitable to sprawl than the erstwhile farmland of West Knoxville.
Thankfully all that Urban Wilderness is now forever safe from McMansions. Instead we have 40 miles of walking and biking trails with a 12.5 mile loop connecting them all. Emily and I are working up to walking that whole loop in one day some time this fall, but in the meantime we are hitting the trails every weekend, hoping to walk on them all and get the official patch!
So far we have walked from Island Home Park (this was on the Will Skelton Greenway and not officially part of the Urban Wilderness Loop) to Ijams to walk on some of the trails there. Of course, we’ve walked all the Ijams trails many a time, but we are doing them all again and probably need one more trip over there to finish them up for the patch. We spent one afternoon doing some of the trails in the William Hastie Natural Area, and Saturday we started exploring the Forks of the River Trails. Each of these places deserves a post to itself, so that’s what I am going to do. And I encourage you to come out and explore the Urban Wilderness for yourselves.View from the Ijams River Trail

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I feel pretty good when I read this list.~ A Grandparent’s Wisdom on Parenting ~

1. Let your child be a child. Children are not little adults.

2. Don’t have too many rules, especially when they’re little. They’re not going to remember them all anyway.

3. Pick your battles. It won’t work to make an issue out of everything your child does that you don’t like.

4. The greatest gift you can give your child besides your love is your time. Whenever possible, interrupt what you are doing to take time for them. Many things you need to do can be put off until later but many things your child does only happen once, and you don’t want to miss them.

5. Don’t micromanage your child’s behavior. It isn’t necessary (or productive in the long run) to try to control everything he or she says or does.

7. Kids get tired. When they do, it’s usually futile to try to reason with them to get them to do what you want.

8. Don’t say things to your own child that you would never dream of saying to someone else’s child.

9. Whatever stage your child is in, remember: this, too, shall pass, and they will move on to another stage. (This may be better or worse than the previous one!)

10. Don’t let mealtime become a battle zone. No child has ever starved to death yet because they didn’t eat everything on their plate.

11. Read to your child.

12. When your child starts talking, listen. What they say is important to them, and kids have great things to say.

13. Spend some time tucking your child into bed each night.

14. It’s good to find a church family to help you raise your child. You need others to support you. Your child needs to establish a good foundation of values and truth. If he or she doesn’t get this early in life, they might get it later and from someone else you may not like.

15. Take time every day to enjoy your child and relish this role God has blessed you with.

(Postscript: my dad says some of these are things he did, and some are things he wishes he’d done. ❤️) …

Timeline Photos"Rather, when you hold a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind; blessed indeed will you be because of their inability to repay you." – Luke 14 #SundayGospel bit.ly/2ZpzEtS…

"Arsonists have set God’s Cathedral aflame. In the Amazon rainforest, home to hundreds of thousands of animal species, 40,000 plant species, and nearly a million indigenous people, fires are raging, destroying the ecological buttresses of one of the most biodiverse and important ecosystems in the world. These creatures are a testament to God’s good creation, a living, breathing cathedral, shaped by the evolutionary forces of God, and entrusted to human hands." …

"Baby loss is not just a story of grief, of pain and of tears, its a beautiful story of love and of celebration.

So let’s scream from the rooftops that all children matter, those that are here and those that we desperately miss."I haven’t shared this picture for quite some time so wanted to post it again this evening. These are my children…the ones that ran ahead and the ones who I get the honour to raise.

Someone said to me in an interview recently well you are the mother of two, I kindly corrected them. I am the mother of 7, just because five of my children didn’t get to grow up on the earth, doesn’t stop them from existing.

I also wanted to say this…Baby loss is not just a story of grief, of pain and of tears, its a beautiful story of love and of celebration.

So let’s scream from the rooftops that all children matter, those that are here and those that we desperately miss. ❤️

I am so unbelievably touched that SO many people have liked and shared this image, THANK You. Please feel free to also like my page and see future posts and quotes, I would love for you to become a FB friend x